


Disseisor

by MajorEnglishEsquire



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Breakfast, Coda, M/M, Recovery, Season/Series 11, Team Free Will
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-18
Updated: 2015-10-18
Packaged: 2018-04-27 00:06:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,997
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5025961
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MajorEnglishEsquire/pseuds/MajorEnglishEsquire
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cas has a voice here and Dean wants to follow it. He wants to follow it like Sam's steady back as they sweep and clear a building. Wants to follow it like the yellow lines of a highway.</p>
<p>--</p>
<p>*coda for an ep that hasn't even aired yet, 11.03, based on the episode preview - assume there are spoilers or whatever</p>
            </blockquote>





	Disseisor

**Author's Note:**

> I do not own the rights to these characters, setting, show, etc. No harm is intended.
> 
> **Spoilers for Season 11, through the 11.03 preview.**

Dean coughs himself awake and it feels phlegmy and wrecked, just like it should. He's still getting used to having his tired, old self back.

Not that he wasn't tired with the Mark on his arm, it was just more of a penetrating, all-day, all- _life_ weariness edged with anger and disgust.

He doesn't know if this cold was coming on before or- nah. He probably caught it after.

Sammy has Emergen-C packs in one of his bags and Dean wanders out to the main room, listens hard, but Sam's not around. So Dean can just raid his stuff in peace.

They left Cas where he is, looking like he's dozing in one of the big, leather library chairs and he hasn't moved all night- morning, whatever.

But Cas doesn't really sleep when he's grace-positive. He just stayed. Just decided to exist exactly where they put him. Dean feels his eyes follow him around the room, poking through Sam's various bags until he comes across a bottle of vitamins.

Good enough.

He might actually have to take them with something that isn't whiskey, though.

They set a glass up on the small table next to Cas. He hasn't touched it because he doesn't need it.

Dean pops two of the vitamins and wanders over to wash them down. Hands the rest of the glass to Castiel.

He takes it and drinks from it because it won't do any more harm than good. He lets the blanket fall from around his shoulders.

Dean takes up the little penlight from where Sam left it. "Look up?"

Cas blinks his eyes wide and does.

No trace of the red left.

"I'm recovered. Just. I'd prefer to sit here a while longer."

"Nothin' wrong with that." It keeps him in the bunker. Nothing wrong with _that_. "Everything feels like it's back in place? All your orders coming from yourself again?"

Cas nods quiet, slow. "To the extent that they ever were. I can." He shrugs. "I can hear them. They're broadcasting and I haven't turned it down. The angels are." He licks his lips and sighs in what looks like honest exhaustion. "So done with me."

"Mm," Dean rolls his lips and nods and decides not to be mean about it.

To his eyes, Cas kept crawling back for abuse. Kept looking for help from a set who had no interest in helping but never tired of hurting. He wants to say, 'If you're smart - and I know you're smart - you won't try going back again.' But push/shove --  
Cas will, eventually, try.

Cas just doesn't give up when love is involved.

He does say, "I wish they'd tell you out loud. I wish they'd say, once and for all, that they don't love you so you'd stop getting yourself beat to shit by, like, extending your hand again. I just wish it wasn't so." He doesn't know. "Back-and-forth with them."

Cas is silent because that wasn't the most sensitive thing to say and Cas is Cas so he's going to absorb every syllable, anyway. Study and learn it.

Dean winces because he should really, really occasionally shut the goddamn fuck up.

"Are you headed somewhere?" Cas asks at his boots.

He only fell asleep with them on, exhausted after the back-to-back enterprise of fighting through The Darkness' infected and then getting Rowena to release her hold on Cas. "Nah. You need something?"

"I could-- um. Could you sit?" he motions to another chair and Dean shrugs, drags it over some. Claims the water glass back and downs the last of it himself. Clunks it on the table.

He sits to the side, tosses a leg over the arm of it, clears his throat of... yuck. Of that before-the-hacking-and-sniffles-set-in feeling.

"I've been waiting to hear the same from you and it doesn't happen," Cas says.

Oh, boy. His jaw clicks and he nods and he says, "That's fair. Ouch. But that's fair."

"Family is complicated."

"Yeah."

"Before we next have our asses handed to us," Cas settles back and pulls at the blanket, winds it around his arm into a bundle to set aside. "I want you to know that you'll never hear that from me." He presses his lips together and settles the blanket at his feet and looks square back at Dean. That head-on stare like a declarative sentence itself. "I plan on. Well. Staying."

Dean considers him. "Staying?"

"I don't. I don't have to. Well. I don't have to ask," he shrugs like he got half-way to cocky and decided that was far enough to look confident. "I can just stay. Until we have some sort of explosive disagreement and you tell me to leave. I think that might be more productive than us just searching for each other all the time. And guessing. Wondering. If you'd like to kick me out, I think you'll have to sway Sam. So. I'm just. Going to stay," he proclaims.

"Uh." Dean doesn't know what to say to that. Besides some joke about fish and company or. Or.

Like. Being _incredibly fucking relived_. And.

Trying not to hear the echo of a bunch of words that didn't mean much at the time. About Cas staying until the world ripped everything else away from them and it was just him with the Mark and Cas with his immortality sitting around being grumpy at each other for the rest of existence.

It was. You know. _More than that_. But. That's kind of framing it in a way he can handle right now.

Cas leans forward slightly and extends a hand. Taps two fingers on the back of Dean's wrist and he coughs again, once and with all his breath, as the common cold flees his system and his sinuses clear and the fatigue feels like it was instantly replaced with those two vitamins because all at once he kinda wants to get up and start stacking books and dusting shelves and the bathroom could do with a scrubbing and the kitchen has been sadly neglected and-

Castiel slides back to a lean, deep in the chair. "I like this family. As messy as it is. As much as it hurts. I fit well. So. I think I'm staying right here."

Dean takes a deep breath. "I got a bedroom kinda. Well it _was_ kind of set up for you. It could be better. But. I mean, your space is already here. So. You might as well stay, yeah," he shrugs like he's playing it off, too.

Acting is nice and casual and it will get him through this staggering event until he's safe behind his own bedroom door again and living across the hall from his best friend who wants to be by his side _forever_ no big deal, no big deal.

Cas inviting himself over is kind of like.  
Well, it's kind of like Cas choosing their family. Choosing to be a Winchester.

(Choosing Dean.)

He's eyeing up Dean's arm where it still sits. So he shucks his overshirt and rolls up the sleeve of his t-shirt a little. They can both see the clean, unblemished skin there.

"We got a lot more to worry about," he mumbles.

"I know. But we can go back to getting our shit kicked in tomorrow," Cas says like he's bored.

Dean likes this.

Cas says just that one throw-away thing and it means they're not even gonna think about hunting more for another 24 hours.

Cas has a voice here and Dean wants to follow it. He wants to follow it like Sam's steady back as they sweep and clear a building. Wants to follow it like the yellow lines of a highway.

He knows how to fight at Cas's side like he already knows how to fight at Sam's.

He knows how this works. He's been wanting this.

And, well. Maybe that's what he just asked for. A blatant yes-or-no.

_I wish they'd just tell you out loud._

_Do we love each other or not?_

The angels aren't willing to say. They want the right to be angry. They want the right to turn their love into obligation. They want the right to honor and disgrace and hurt and love each other all at once. Those things don't all belong together and neither do they - Cas and the angels. They don't belong together.

Because Cas is willing to say it. He puts it out there; declares his love and accepts the consequences for the way he feels.

Fuck.

Is Dean willing to?

More than just, 'you've already got a bed and a dresser so why not?'  
Instead of 'why not,' how about 'definitely'?  
How about 'yes, please.'

"How about. I show you how to make waffles? And. We get the coffee started. And. You can hang your jacket up in my room. And. Later, you can decide where it is you want to keep your stuff. I mean. I don't get to tell you where your space is, you know? You know where you're supposed to be and. Where we kind of. All fit together," he says slowly, like presenting a list of options.

Cas nods lazy and considering. "Hm. That makes more sense."

"And I mean-" he can't possibly fucking stop himself. "There's, you know. Like. Plenty of space in my-"

"I don't know about waffles, though," Cas says.

"Uh. There's. There's always pancakes. Omelets? Toast," he shrugs.

"Pop-tarts."

"Pop-tarts, yeah. Bagels."

"Tell me I don't have to leave," Cas says, softer, leaning forward.

Dean straightens up in his seat and leans forward on his knees. "Not ever. Nobody can ever tell you that you don't belong here. Where your family's at."

"Tell me." He simply says again.

Dean nods. "Yeah. We love you. You don't have to go anywhere."

Cas scrubs a hand over his mouth, hushing over stubble, takes a breath and nods. "Okay."

"Okay," Dean nods. Gets up and pulls Cas forward by the back of his head. Plants a kiss in his hair and gets fucking jittery as hell over it. Even pulling away and kicking off his boots and telling Cas where the Pop-tarts are in the pantry.

Cas likes the cinnamon-brown sugar ones. He under-toasts them in Dean's opinion but seems to enjoy them just fine. Cas divides his time between one counter and the other, makes a coffee for Sam with his almond milk and one half-packet of artificial sweetener and drops off a mug of black at the table as he goes to deliver it.

He comes back without his jacket. Or his shoes.

Comes back and sits on Dean's side of the table and claims a swig from the mug before turning the handle back toward Dean.

Sam is blurry when he comes to grab a granola bar of some kind, still holding his coffee. He mumbles, "Hey, Dean," walks back out with it stuck between his teeth, the wrapper still half-on.

"He doesn't snore." Cas turns to look at Dean. "You do."

"You'll get used to it," the last half of his Pop-tart breaks in two and clunks to his plate. "Uh. I mean-"

"I already am," he says.

Dean keeps his eyes on the plate while he sweeps up the last of it and drinks half the coffee before Cas claims the rest.

He puts the mug back down, says, "You sleep on the left side of the bed."

Dean clears his throat. "Um. Yeah."

Cas stares down into the empty cup. "Can you." He takes a breath, asks quiet: "Can you tell me one more time?"

"Hey."

Cas looks to him.

"How about you tell me."

He seems to think for a moment.  
"We love you. You don't have to go anywhere. We would follow."

Dean stretches his fingers out on the table. Stares down at them. "Thanks." Nods. "Thanks."

Cas gets up to get more coffee. He grabs Dean by the neck and plants a kiss on his head. "Right."


End file.
